Theoretical Determination and Experimental Verification of Transport Index of Rectangular Shaped Radioactive Containers

Abstract

Ionizing radiations are widely used to sustain and enhance our quality of life in the areas such as medical diagnosis, therapy, scientific research and industry etc. Ionizing radiations are available from radioactive sources which are made of radioactive materials. The radioactive materials are produced in either nuclear power or research reactors or nuclear accelerators or extracted from the naturally found radioactive ores. These radioactive sources and radioactive materials need to be transported from their places of production to the places of applications and finally to waste repositories. The radioactive materials are transported in well designed packages having various shapes and sizes. In the field of radioactive transport, it is a mandatory to find the Transport Index (TI) to be mentioned on each package for transportation. This research is focused on the determination of the maximum γ-ray radiation dose at one meter from the surface of cubic and rectangular shaped package or containers. A computer code “Solid Angle for Transport Index” (SAFTI) has been developed using MATLAB to determine the location of maximum value of the radiation dose rate from the surface of a rectangular or square container. This maximum dose rate is used to determine the transport index. Some of the results of the code have been compared with the experimental results. The results of this research are useful not only to determine TI for individual packages but also to find the TI of the vehicles carrying the transport packages.